e-travels with e. trules

Here it is... one of kind.... a travel story not about... me! Along with excerpts from Season 1, and final travelogue. "Tear" is about a 15 year old Chicano boy named Alejandro Chavez, my "mentee", and the bus trip he took across the US-Tijuana border in 1995. Alex, as he like to be called, told me this story, and I've tried to capture it here. I think it's a love story about the distance between...

These words from my guest in this Episode, Debra Ehrhardt, solo performer and native of Jamaica: "Your saying 'no' to me is just a way of my saying, ok, how can I get 'yes'?" "In America, there is no class system; they see you as you are." "When a man is involved in a child's life, it makes such a difference." "People who travel are so much more interesting than those who stay in their tiny little...

This episode finds Trules chugging up the Mighty Mekong River, on a flat-top, tin-roof, diesel-puffing dinosaur, from northern Thailand to southern Laos, metaphorically and musically searching for mad Mr. Kurtz, from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and of course, more recently adapted by Francis Ford Coppola into his film, "Apocalypse Now", where Kurtz is notoriously played by mad Marlon Bran...

Trules speaks with one of Los Angeles' true musical and theatrical treasures, Morlan Higgins. Be serenaded with Morlan's mandolin, learn about his acting with Pulitzer-Pfrize winning playwright, Athol Fugard, and hear about "the river of life" http://erictrules.com/episode16

Amsterdam, Christmas 2013  As ex-heavyweight champ, Sonny Liston, always said, "Life... a funny thang". It comes and goes -- in cycles. When we're in an "up" cycle... feeling good about ourselves and our lives, it seems nothing can go wrong. We're invincible. When we're in a "down" cycle... of loss, transition, fear, it seems that nothing can go right. We're unworthy. Me? I'm more like Chicken Lit...

In this lively episode, Trules talks with Liz Femi, a fellow solo performer and storyteller, who was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in Nigeria, a country not many tourists - or travelers - know much about. Liz is a small, smart, beautiful, and feisty young woman who her Mom describes as: "a really bendy, bouncy branch... connected to a strong Nigerian oak tree". http://erictrules.com/episo...

Echo Park, the one time immigrant-socialist-artist neighborhood of Los Angeles, has undergone the sad and inevitable process of "gentrification". Trules, a long-time Echo park resident, goes to the annual Cubano musical festival and is confronted head on with "unneighborhly" gentrification. Complete with original Cuban music composed by Amanda Yamate and an original score with roosters, fireworks,...

Trules speaks with long-time friend and Israeli diplomat, Raphael Morav, who he has visited in Rome, Jerusalem, Helsinki, and Paris. Hear them chat about politics, Israel, diplomacy, kibuttzes, travel, SERVAS, the United Nations, and more.  http://erictrules.com/episode12

In December, 2001, just months after 9/11, Trules arrives in Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo in East Malaysia. Teaching at an all-Islamic university on a Fulbright grant, he is confronted with images of Osama Bin Laden - on the screensavers of his university colleagues - and on t-shirts in every shopping mall. Talk about culture shock, he learns that Bin Laden is the most admired man in Mala...

Trules talks with long-time travel blogger and podcaster, Chris Christensen, "The Amateur Traveler"... whose cool rules of the road include: 1- "Never lose your sense of wonder and adventure when you're traveling." 2- "Never complain that you don't do things that way at home; that's part of the point of traveling." 3- "Never whne, because in the grand scheme of things, if you can afford to travel,...

Trules arrives at the international airport in Denpasar on the magical island of Bali - to meet his Indonesian wife - but she is not there. She is, instead, in the local Kasi Ibue hospital with... dengue fever... one of the most feared, mosquito-born illnesses in the world. After waiting a week with Surya on intravenous drip, they go to the "Good Karma" bungalows on the still-pristine East Coast o...

My guest this week is Jonathan Munoz-Proulx, otherwise know as "JMP", my former student and now independent theater artist, who first gave me the idea of doing a travel podcast. After seeing me do many readings and performance of my stories on stage, and then reading them on my travel blog, he said: "Your stories are SO MUCH BETTER when we hear your voice! You should do a podcast." And the rest…....

Beijing, China, 2007 It's a year before the Beijing Olympics and there are crowds and pollution everywhere. I've been invited to teach the LDTX Bejing Modern Dance Company, the Joffrey Ballet of China. I'm 60 years old and I haven't danced in over 30 years. What am I going to do? "Figure it out," says that jackal trickster, Travel. "Improvise! Isn't that your specialty?" "Thanks, a lot, Travel. I...

My guest this episode is Hayden Lee, the self-professed son of a hippie and a biker, and the host of the popular, Travel Stories Podcast. Born in rural Shropshire, England, Hayden is a musician and an intrepid world traveler who can't help but navigate every conversation into a story. In fact, Hayden, like me, believes that memorable stories are what travel, life, and podcasts... are all about. Th...

Alausi, Ecuador. 2003. I married for the first time at age 55. Also in 2003. I married an Indonesian girl from Sumatra who I met in Bali, who was 31 years younger than I was and who spoke almost no English. Go figure, huh? But in the summer of 2003, a few months after we tied the knot in LA, we took our first extended trip together, to Machu Picchu in Peru, and up the Avenidas de los Volcanos, alo...

My guests this time are my 2 trusty and talented production colleagues, Alysha Bermudez, our imaginative and immersive sound designer, and Amanda Yamate, our composer who creates music tapestries from all over the world. Both are college students well on their way to professional careers. Alysha is in the Sound Design program at USC and Amanda is in the Film Scoring Program at Cal State Northridge...

June, 2006. Trules has arrived in Mumbai on the day that 5 bombs have exploded in 5 different train stations in the financial hub, but still beggared, megalopolis of the sub-continent. He heads southeast, up into the mountainous tea plantations of Munnar, high in the Western Ghats of the province of green, green Kerala. There he takes a terrifying bus ride down a serendipitous mountainside where h...

Welcome to the first "Behind the Scenes" episode of "e-travels with e. trules", a twice a month feature of the podcast, where I will be speaking to friends, colleagues, fellow podcasters and travelers around the world.... in between my monthly scripted shows. The first guest is my producer, Harry Duran, host of "Podcast Junkies". Harry has been my podcast guru and guide through this new art form f...

Israel, 1999. Trules ventures south from Jerusalem, crossing the Israeli-Egyptian border at Eilot. He makes camp at "Ras Es Satan", Head of the Devil, sleeping in a primitive "chousha", just feet from the Red Sea. He swims with the neon-lit fishes and organizes a 2 day camel safari, overnight into the Sinai Desert, home of Moses, Joshua, and the first tribes of Israel. His guide is swarthy Bedouin...

Like to travel? Like to listen to travel tales from well off the beaten path? Well then, you've come to the right podcast. "e-travels with e.trules" is a personal and literary podcast created by Eric Trules, a longtime Huffington Post blogger and theater Professor at USC in Los Angeles, Trules has traveled our beautiful and problematic planet for decades, staying in Bedouin huts on the Red Sea, ri...